The dollhouse in the attic was moldy, dilapidated, falling apart. The owner was ready to toss it, but professional organizer Vickie Dellaquila thought the old plaything might have some value.
"After you've done this a while, you get a sense of these things," said Dellaquila, a former nursing-home caseworker who now helps seniors downsize to smaller quarters. "We cleaned it up a little bit and put it on eBay, and it sold for $1,600."
More often, though, Dellaquila has to convince her clients of the opposite: that the couch they paid good money for 45 years ago, for example, is not going to fund their retirements.
"Yes, it was a nice couch then, but people have been sitting on it for 45 years," said Dellaquila, the author of "Don't Toss My Memories in the Trash: A Step-by-step Guide to Helping Seniors Downsize, Organize, and Move."
Whether you're decluttering your own house, helping someone else clear out before a move or sorting out an estate after a parent dies, it can help to know what's truly valuable and what's not.
Otherwise, you can wind up dithering over every single item and never complete the chore. Or, at the other extreme, you could discard items of great monetary or sentimental value in your zeal to get the job done.
I almost did the latter. In sorting through my late father's book collection, I tossed aside a small, dusty book by an author I'd never heard of. Fortunately, my sister took a second look and discovered the author had inscribed the book to our great-uncle Harry Pulliam in 1902, the same year Harry was elected commissioner of baseball's National League. We have no other mementos of our great-uncle, so to us it was a valuable find.
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I wouldn't have been the first person or the last to ditch something of value, said collectibles expert Harry L. Rinker."I hate seeing those big garbage bins outside homes," said Rinker, who was featured in HGTV's "Collector Inspector" series and wrote "Sell, Keep, or Toss? How to Downsize a Home, Settle an Estate, and Appraise Personal Property."
To Rinker, those bins represent haste and waste. Common household items may not seem valuable individually, he said, but together they might fetch a few hundred bucks in a yard sale or an estate sale. Items that aren't worth taking the time to sell can be donated or recycled. And even a modest household might contain objects of unexpected value.
A big problem is that people don't give themselves enough time to do the job right, Rinker said. The whole task -- from sorting through rooms, researching values and following through on sales or donations -- can take two to three months for a household that's downsizing and four to six months for an estate, he said. If you're willing to pay for help, various professionals, from appraisers to estate sale coordinators, can shorten the time involved.
Before you start sorting, though, you should understand the various kinds of value objects can have. Rinker divides value into four categories:
- Collector value. Pieces that are in demand by collectors.
- Decorative value. Objects people use to decorate their homes.
- Reuse value. Items that could be sold, generally for five to 10 cents on the dollar of what they cost new.
- Family value. Articles with family memories attached that may or may not have significant financial value.
Rinker recommends keeping or distributing to other family members any objects with strong memories attached, but he cautions against hanging on to anything simply because it was handed down to you or "because the kids might want it someday."
6 ways to spot collector value
If you're trying to determine which items might be worth selling, ask yourself:Is it in fashion? Collecting and decorating trends change frequently. Rinker recommends perusing the home-decorating shelves at a bookstore to see what's currently hot. If a style or era isn't represented on those shelves, he said, there may be little demand. EBay Pulse or Collectors.org can tip you off to collecting trends. For example, vintage postcards and figural pins are enjoying an increase in popularity. And you can use a search engine such as Bing or Google to find out how many sites are peddling merchandise similar to yours.
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Are there plenty of avid collectors? Today's collecting trends are driven largely by baby boomers, who are seeking out toys and other objects they remember from their youth, Rinker said. Demand for older collectibles, such as cast-iron toys and Depression-era glass, is fading and is unlikely to return as their most avid collectors die off, Rinker said.
Is it scarce? The vast majority of items in most homes were mass-produced, so Rinker suggests it's better to assume an item is more common than you think. A case in point: mass-produced "collector's edition" items, an oxymoron if there ever was one. The more limited and expensive an item was originally, though, the more value it might retain if it's in demand at all by collectors. My sister's Mrs. Beasley doll, for example, likely would be worth less than her Steiff City Mouse set specially made for FAO Schwartz (assuming we could find the latter, which we haven't, alas).
Is it in good shape? If you can hold an item at arm's length and see damage, Rinker said, the object's value is diminished. If there is major damage, it may not be salable.
Is it complete? Full sets are likely to be worth more than pieces. If you have the box an item came in, you might be able to elevate it from yard-sale fare to eBay-worthy if the item is otherwise in demand. (And speaking of boxes, even an empty one can have value to collectors if it's the right packaging, such as the box for a vintage Lionel train set.)
Does it have intrinsic value? Gold and sterling silver have a "melt" value, even if whatever the metals are made into isn't in demand by collectors. You do need to separate the real stuff from items that are just gold-plated or silver-plated, however. A magnet won't attract high-quality gold jewelry, for example. Sterling silver is typically stamped "sterling" or "925," though it might be marked 800, 840 or 850. If it's a very old piece, it might have no marking at all. Rinker recommends getting an appraisal before assuming it's plated.
Continued: And now for the big pile of stuff
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